You are here

SportBusiness Postgraduate Course Rankings 2017 | Introduction

SportBusiness Postgraduate Course Rankings 2017 | Introduction

By: SportBusiness International team

Posted:

30 Jun 2017

Article

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Email

Print

SCROLL TO BOTTOM FOR PDF DOWNLOAD OF RANKINGS SUPPLEMENT

Welcome to the 2017 SportBusiness Postgraduate Course Rankings. Once again, we have had a tremendous response with around 1,000 surveys completed by alumni and course leaders. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to and participated in the rankings.

Our objective is to provide the most reliable and respected rankings system for postgraduate sports management courses across the world. As in previous years we consulted an advisory board of leading academics to gather feedback on the last rankings process before the launch of the 2017 edition. Following their input, four changes have been made to the methodology for this year’s rankings.

The principal update was to expand the course leaders’ choice and, for the first time, to include these results in the overall score, thus directly incorporating the views of sports management academic professionals in the final rankings.

Previously course leaders were asked to nominate which course they considered to be the best outside of their own. In 2017 course leaders were requested to select both the top five courses and the top five business schools, outside of their own.

Courses were assessed based on the overall quality of the student education, taking into account the quality of course content; the standard of teaching; the number and standing of guest speakers; the provision and quality of work placements/ internships; and the programme of alumni support.

The selection of the top five business schools or faculties was based on the institution’s overall academic reputation; quality, number and standing of staff; the number and quality of papers published; and research capability.

Click image for full-size version:

These two scores were combined to create the overall course leaders’ choice which now accounts for 15 per cent of the overall score.

In order to incorporate the course leaders’ choice into the rankings the employment weighting in the overall score was reduced from a maximum 40 per cent to 25.

At the same time the employment measurement period was increased from three months after graduation to six months to allow for a more realistic timeframe for students to enter the industry. This resulted in higher employment scores for many universities than in previous years.

In addition several new options were added to the employment section to cater for additional outcomes. These included adding full-time employment in a non-sports industry company, but connected to sport (e.g. the marketing department of a major sport sponsor), and dividing internships into a range of options.

And the winners are…

Ohio University topped the overall list for the fifth time in the six-year history of the rankings and also rated highest on the alumni choice. The University of Massachusetts Amherst ranked top among the course leaders’ choice ahead of Ohio University and Deakin University in Australia.

In Europe it was a return to the top for the CIES’s Fifa Master, which, like Ohio, recorded its fifth win in six years.

On the following pages you will find reaction and insight from the top three North American and European courses, and see the full list of the top 40 courses overall and the top 15 for both North America and Europe. In addition, there are separate tables for the course leaders’ and graduates’ choices and an analysis of the employment status of students before and after graduation.

Once again SportBusiness International would like to thank all the course leaders and alumni who participated in the rankings and we hope you find the supplement a useful and interesting guide to this dynamic sector.

Advertisements

In Brief

Uefa has today (Thursday) announced that the Atatürk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey, will host the final of its Champions League competition in 2020, while European football’s governing body has also confirmed the schedule for the Euro 2020 national team tournament.